Chapter 1: District Trash
My strongest memory is far from my first.
I grew up like the average poor girl in District Six. Living in a three room tenement with no running water, my parents made their living the same way everyone else in that building did, with the smell of cooking drugs constantly in my nostrils. They weren't against sampling their own stash too. Their faces morph in my memories from the years of dope. They weren't against teaching their daughter the tricks of the trade either. I was learning how to cook things other than food at the age of six -actively selling by eight. Nothing really unique.
It wasn't the fact that they cooked and sold that got them in trouble in the end. They didn't do anything to anger the people above us who demanded protection money, and they didn't piss off their customers or the competition enough for them to be reported to the Peacekeepers. Peacekeepers were actually some of their best repeat customers. None of them had a problem with smoking a little bud here and there or trying something even stronger. For the ones from the Capitol, it was a way to pass their free time in a flow of good vibes and dancing imagery. For the ones from District Two, it was a way to try to forget the things they saw and did in the name of keeping the Capitol's peace – so no, the Peacekeepers weren't the problem.
It was their own genius that brought about their downfall . They were drug addled, sure, but geniuses all the same. It was their last creation – a form of morphling with three times the potency of prescription morphling with a dash of chemicals that mimicked the high of dope and the stimulation of speed into this mind-melting chimera of a drug called D-6 Diamonds.
The Peacekeepers could tolerate a lot of things, but one of their own Capitolite members dying covered in gore and piss from trying to peel off the yellow lines dotting the pavement in the roads - run over by his own comrades who were taking a joy ride no less! Well, that was something they couldn't let slide.
I was cutting dope with my mom's 'extra special family formula' in that mess of a tenement, just a few weeks shy of ten years old, when the door burst open and Peacekeepers clad in grey uniforms and white armor and shiny, shiny black guns swarmed into the apartment, yelling.
"Get down on the ground!" The one in front said, looking impossibly big, a golden star on his uniform to show he was the leader of this squad. "Drop the drugs and get down on the ground!"
He signaled and the others filed out, combing through the three tiny rooms, overturning the little furniture we had, cutting through our old, stained couch until tainted stuffing filled the air.
My parents were never the types of people who intended to go quietly, though. My father grabbed me and slid the illegal knife he wore at his side and pressed it to my throat. A bead of blood came out and slowly trickled down to my collarbone.
"You're going to leave," he half-growled, "now, or I swear I'll do it."
The lead Peacekeeper threw his head back and laughed. "That's supposed to be a threat? It's your child. Go ahead, one less problem for us to worry about later."
I was shaking in my father's arms. He'd never been the most affectionate of fathers, preferring his work to his child. This might've honestly been the first time he'd ever actually held me and, as quickly as he grabbed me, he threw me down on the ground. Despite his threats, he wasn't willing to kill his own child, even if he might've forgotten her name half the time.
Instead, he charged at the head Peacekeeper with my mother following behind, and I watched with wide eyes as their bodies became riddled with holes and fell to the floor, unmoving.. The rest of the Peacekeepers in the squad finished ransacking the house, stuffing product in their bags, taking whatever valuables they could find.
Meanwhile, I was frozen on the ground. I knew what death was. Had even seen bodies before. You couldn't escape that, not here. But never had it happened before my eyes before, not like this. From behind me another Peacekeeper spoke.
"She shouldn't have to see this."
"Always soft-hearted, huh, Marius?" The leader jeered. "She's District trash, it doesn't matter. But whatever, fine."
I couldn't see who it was - they had moved behind me and I was facing the wrong way, still facing my parents. So I couldn't see who removed their grey-blue standard issue Peacekeeper coat, but I did hear the rustling of fabric, felt the coarse fabric cover me. Only then did I break from my frozen state, a strangled cry rising in my throat as I blindly surged forward toward my parents' bodies.
"Oh, no you don't." I was unceremoniously lifted into the air and kicked and screamed but the Peacekeeper held me tight.
"Get me a goddamn sedative," the voice said, the one who said I didn't have to see the bodies, "She's fucking strong."
"Finally growing balls," I heard another say through their mask. "Must be something to knock her out in this pigsty."
"Shame the old man didn't off her," that was the leader again. "Would've saved us some paperwork."
Something sharp jabbed me through the coat and I could feel a my parents' own formula coursing through my veins, making my muscles limp almost instantly. "We'll drop her off at a home, there's enough of them. Another orphan District kid won't matter. If she talks we can just say it's the drugs."
"Good thinking."
Then nothing. Nothing but darkness.
From beside me my cellie popped her gum. "Are you going to go?"
I broke from the memory and came back to my body, staring at the crumbling grey ceiling and bare lightbulbs of the Halsch House. "What?"
"I swear." Dove Roone was a bratty teen from a more privileged part of the District. Unlike most of us residents, she wasn't an orphan and she wasn't much of a criminal either. The Halsch House housed both and often they overlapped. There were a hundred kids in the District with the surname Halsch - a marker of that status. If you were young enough, did something bad enough, or had no surviving family members - they made you a Halsch. Dove Roone was caught thieving a cheap necklace off some store in the merchant part of the District despite coming from a family who could probably afford it ten times over. They could've bought her freedom, bribed a Peacekeeper, kept her out, but as far as I knew, her little act of petty theft was such a disgrace in the eyes of her family that they wanted her to have the harshest sentence possible to teach her a lesson.
Pop. She popped her contraband gum for the fifth time in five minutes and I turned to glare at her. She was lounging on her bed, her long blond hair spilled out on her pillow, billowing like golden wings. Self-consciously, I rubbed my own shorn black hair. It'd been buzzed in the Great Lice Outbreak of '66 earlier this year but she had been spared that as well.
"You're so lucky, getting a visitor." As if she didn't get visitors, especially visitors who didn't smuggle in contraband like the gum she insisted on popping. "No one visits today." Her unspoken words hung silently in the air. It's easier to pretend you don't have a kid on Reaping Day if they're in the Halsch House.
"I'd rather not be visited at all." I muttered, glaring at her.
"Dominic Halsch, please make your way down to the visitor's center. Dominic Halsch, please make your way down to the visitor's center." Now I could hear the crackling voice over the institute wide intercom. I groaned. He always came today. Every year. Maybe it was how he alleviated the guilt, made him feel like he wasn't some monster like the rest of them. I didn't know. Didn't much care. He knew I'd rather he never visited at all and yet he persisted. Still, if I ignored the summons I would earn myself a decent dressing down with the riding crop the head of house wielded after the Reaping and I didn't much want that either.
I swung my legs over the side of my cot, groaning, and looked at myself in the cracked mirror. Death pale skin, buzzed black hair, and electric blue eyes stared back at me and I stuck my tongue out at the spectre while reaching across the sink to Dove's little bin of makeup, helping myself to some of her dark eyeshadow, and smearing it across my cheeks until I looked like I was positively grubby. I unzipped the Halsch House grey jumpsuit with the five yellow stripes on the right breast down as immodestly as I could get away with and Dove's reflection rolled its eyes at me.
"Drama queen," she muttered, taking her gum out of her mouth and sticking it on the metal railing by her headboard. It was dotted with wet lumps of chewed gum that the staff remained blind to despite their number. I allowed myself to entertain the thought of scraping it off and sticking it in her long hair.
"Priss," I countered, and shoved open the heavy door to our cell, unlocked now in anticipation for me to heed the intercom's call. My bare feet padded on the grainy thin grey carpet that covered the floor in the hallway of the wing we lived in. I never bothered with the boots that were a part of our prescribed uniforms preferring to feel where I was walking and what I was walking on. Besides, I'd worn those shit-kickers since I got my third stripe three years ago and they were currently held together only by a liberal application of electrical tape that I'd swiped out of the janitorial office one night.
The visitor's center wasn't even really a center. Crimmie Halsch kids didn't deserve some nice little center and besides there weren't enough of us who got visitors to justify making one so instead it was just a long bare room with the usual metal tables and chairs bolted to the floor lest one of us tried to go on a rampage.
He was sitting in one of those chairs, uniform with the stars on, helmet off, hands folded under his chin, his face the picture of peace. Somehow it reminded me again of what would take place at noon today because I knew any other visitor – District visitor – would be worried out of their fucking minds in regards to their loved ones on the morning of the Reaping. Though, it wasn't like he or I was a loved one to each other anyway so maybe I was expecting too much of him.
The door squealed as it opened and then banged when I slammed it behind me. I'd hoped to startle him, see him jump, but no such luck. Instead he turned those serene green eyes onto me and sighed.
"Really?" Marius said, eyeing my choice of fashion.
I shoved my hands in my jumpsuit pockets and took my time strolling over to the chair facing his own before dropping into it as if it was my own personal throne, and not some cold as ice bare metal chair. "I have no clue what you're referring to," I said, widening my eyes in a show of innocence.
"Petty doesn't look good on you," he replied.
"Really? First time I've heard that." I shot back.
"Zip up your goddamn jumpsuit."
"Sure, gotta show off those five yellow stripes, just like you need to show off those five pretty golden stars." I said, but complied.
He scowled at me. "Watch yourself, you earn another stripe at your age and even I won't be able to get you out of going to the actual adult prison."
"But I worked so hard to get those," I pouted. "Just like you."
The Halsch House housed Regs – regular orphan kids albeit with behavioral problems who needed to live in a community home provided by the District – and Crimmies – kids like me who broke the laws of the District. You could even get doubly lucky like me and be an orphan and a Crimmie but you could never be a Reg and a Crimmie – the Regs had too much pride for that.
The stripes marked the sentences, the severity of the crimes, the dangerousness of the inmate. I was pretty proud of my five yellow stripes to tell the truth. My parents might've been geniuses at what they'd done but I was even better; call it in the blood. After they died, I bounced from community home to community home leaving a whirlwind of my own recipes and theirs in my wake along with smashed furniture, battered staff, and beat up kids. I grew up lanky but strong from brawling, fingers nimble enough to handle almost anything caustic but stained black at the tips from the chemicals, and hands small enough to be considered almost dainty but with knuckles calloused and hardened from brawling – sometimes bare, sometimes garnished with the illegal brass knuckles I cherished like a wedding ring. They'd been a nightmare to get but oh, so worth it. Coupled with the amount of times I'd run off and lived in the streets before being chased down once more and returned to whichever hellhole I left, I really should've gotten the stripes earlier.
I knew the reason why I didn't and it sat across from me wearing a serene expression, a Peacekeeper's coat with five golden stars, and a guilty, guilty conscience.
AN: Welcome to The Tribute and the Peacekeeper! I hope you'll stay around to read. My updating schedule is every two weeks but I might surprise you guys occassionally. I hope I can follow this schedule but I will be in residential treatment and won't have a large amount of time on the computer but I promise to do my best.